Check if value exists in php multi-dimensional array before adding - php

Question

I have a separate set of functions that grabs a "Date" and a "Time" from my application and puts the date into as a key, and the time as a multi-dimensional value.
For example purposes:
$alldatetimes = array(
'date1' => array('13:00','14:30','14:30','14:30','15:00'),
'date2' => array('09:00','10:00','10:30','10:30','12:00')
);
foreach ($alldatetimes as $date => $times) {
echo '<h1>This Exports:</h1>';
echo '<h2>'.$date.'</h2><br>';
foreach ($times as $time) {
echo $time.'<br>';
}
}
This exports:
date1
13:00
14:30
14:30
14:30
15:00
date2
09:00
10:00
10:30
10:30
12:00
I'm trying to control if the time is put into the array so only one value each is in the array (I don't want 3 instances of 14:30 for that date).
Based on other posts here I tried to build something like this to identify if the value was there, but I can't figure out how to tie it all together:
function searchForId($id, $array) {
foreach ($array as $date => $times) {
foreach ($times as $time) {
if ($time === $id) {
return $time;
}
}
}
return null;
}
Any ideas?
Update: Here is how the array is initially being created - this probably can be more efficient:
while ($schedule_q -> have_posts() ) : $schedule_q->the_post();
$alldatetimes [get_the_date()][] = get_the_time();
endwhile;

Answer 1

You can add a array_unique() call over each sub-array before you loop over your results to ensure it's all unique:
foreach ($alldatetimes as &$row) {
$row = array_unique($row);
}
Output:
<h1>This Exports:</h1>
<h2>date1</h2><br>
13:00<br>
14:30<br>
15:00<br>
<h1>This Exports:</h1>
<h2>date2</h2><br>
09:00<br>
10:00<br>
10:30<br>
12:00<br>

Answer 2

It is not shown in your question, but how about modifying your function that builds the date/time array to use the times as keys instead of values? Using something like
$alldatetimes[$date][$time]++
in that function would give you an array with one value for each time that would be the number of occurrences of that date/time combination, like this:
$alldatetimes = array(
'date1' => array('13:00' => 1,'14:30' => 3,'15:00' => 1),
'date2' => array('09:00' => 1,'10:00' => 1,'10:30' => 2,'12:00' => 1)
);
Then you could change your code that prints them out to use the key.
foreach ($times as $time => $count) {
echo $time.'<br>';
}

Answer 3

You can write a recursive function
function in_array_r($needle, $haystack, $strict = false) {
foreach ($haystack as $item) {
if (($strict ? $item === $needle : $item == $needle) || (is_array($item) && in_array_r($needle, $item, $strict))) {
return true;
}
}
return false;
}